


Time of Water

by tb_ll57



Category: Elenium/Tamuli Series - David & Leigh Eddings
Genre: Background Relationships, F/M, Gap Filler, Parent-Child Relationship, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-11
Updated: 2014-11-11
Packaged: 2018-02-25 00:22:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2601716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tb_ll57/pseuds/tb_ll57
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>To his shame, it was nearly two months before Kurik heard of his son's disappearance.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time of Water

To his shame, it was nearly two months before Kurik heard of his son's disappearance.

In recent years his visits had become only semi-regular. Since Sparhawk's exile Kurik had little reason to make the long ride from the Pandion Motherhouse in Demos to its smaller chapter in Cimmura, and no reason at all to wander the capital city. He'd only sent a letter, the last time he'd passed through, with no time to visit in person. The lack of answer had bothered him, but it had been in the midst of fall harvest and he'd forgot soon enough. He didn't have occasion to think on it again til Preceptor Vanion required a messenger, and then, to his credit, he leapt at the opportunity.

But, time and change going hand in hand as they did, he arrived in Cimmura to find things very different than he'd left them a full season before. Before winter, Elys and the boy had lived in the garrett above the baker's shop in the crowded Lower Quarter. It was a small space, made smaller when the landlord added a rickety wooden division to house two sets of paying renters in an area meant for one, but it was warm, it was well-lit, and it was safe from fire and robbery both by virtue of jutting high over the dirt street below. After winter, Kurik climbed the stairs with a sack of farm squash and Aslade's damson plum jam, but when he knocked and called, the man who answered claimed to have lived there for months, and only shrugged at Kurik's urgent demands of the fate of the previous tenants.

'Blonde girl?' Kurik asked the baker below. 'Twenty-five or so. The boy is seven, so high.' He indicated something at his hip. 'They lived here for years.'

'I'm sure I have no idea,' the baker said sourly. 'Buy something, Goodman, or leave.'

Kurik slapped a coin on the counter. 'Squire,' he said. 'You're this man's apprentice?' he asked the boy who wrapped him a floury loaf. 'You've seen them?'

'No, Squire. But I only been here a month.'

So it went from door to door. No-one had seen Elys, no-one remembered the woman and child, no-one had time for questions. Cimmura was the largest city in Elenia and it could swallow two helpless citizens like the river swallowed its banks with spring floods.

Dispirited and afraid, Kurik's steps dragged as he returned to the stables for his horse. It was his negligence had done this. He'd got himself a bastard and robbed a girl of her marriageable prospects, all for an evening's weakness. The sick-houses must be next-- and he prayed for the sick-houses, not the charnel-houses or, God forbid it, the stews. He buried his face in his horse's mane, eyes closed, giving himself time to feel the panic at that horror and then to conquer it. He did no-one any good panicking. He knew nothing yet but that they were not where he expected them to be--

'Squire?'

It was the baker's apprentice. He carted a pail of fresh coal from the farrier around the corner, and nursed a burn on one chubby hand. Kurik found his kerchief in a pocket of his vest, and offered it. The boy twitched an uncertain smile as he accepted it, carefully wrapping the handle of his pail.

'I know Talen,' he said. 'He's the boy you're lookin' after, yeah?'

'You know where he's gone?' Kurik pressed. 'Him and his mother.'

'Only know Talen. He worked for the baker 'fore me. He said Talen stole from him.'

'He wouldn't do that,' Kurik automatically defended his son. 'What happened?'

'Run him out,' the boy said. 'Threatened to call the Watch on him.' The boy spat to the hay at their feet. 'He lies in his books. So he can cheat his taxes. We all know. But his cousin's on the Town Council. And he's the only baker this side of the bridge.'

'You know where they've gone?'

'No, sir, Squire. Well, I know where you might look, though.'

For that the boy got his own coin, twice what Kurik had paid for the bread. The boy bit it and tucked it away in his shoe. 'Thank you kindly, Master. Check by the Washers on River Front.  Lots of Lowers folk go there, and the Dyers is always takin' on new hands, if your lady were lookin' for work.'

It was nearly sunset when Kurik found her there. Lower Quarter was a labyrinthine place of unpaved roads darkly overhung with poorly built houses and stuffed to bursting with overcrowding. He didn't see the sky til he passed through the gate, and it was a typically murky day, overcast and palled with the smoke of peat and torchlight. So close to the city the river was murkier still, almost black with human waste of all kinds. The poor who couldn't buy access to city wells drew their water from that polluted source, bathed on its shores, brought their washing there. Kurik prowled the left bank, trying to catch each face as people gathered their belongings to leave with the close of day. Twice he caught the arm of a woman of the right height, with a straight nose and small jaw, startled blue eyes staring back at him.

And then with the last of the light he found her. Her golden hair was hidden away beneath a sweated rag, and deep shadows lined her youthful face. Her basket was too heavy for her tiny frame, and she struggled through the mud, nearly slipping before he reached to help. She flushed deeply, stammering a thanks. He saw the exact moment she recognised him. Her eyes froze on his face, a moment before her body threw into motion. She was in his arms, her laundry spilled at their feet, her mouth frantic on his.

'You fool woman,' he said roughly, caressing her cheeks. It took all he had not to return her kiss, but he resisted it, closing his hands on her shoulders and pushing her gently away. 'Elys. Elys, you're unwell. I can feel the fever in you.'

'There was illness in the city this winter,' she said. Her voice was still like the music of a country lark, not that she'd ever heard that sound. The flush on her skin did not abate, and perspiration gleamed at her throat. Kurik bent to help her gather the washing, brushing at the dirt. Their hands touched, and Elys snatched hers back. 'But why have you come?' she whispered.

'I always come.'

'I thought...' She bundled a much-darned petticoat in her lap, twisting a length of tatty ribbon over small fingers.

Kurik took it from her for the basket, and carried that himself. 'I'll always come,' he promised heavily.

 

**

 

The rented room to which Elys led him was barely four whole walls. The cracks let the cold in, but the rain was a worse danger, judging by the full pails beneath the drips in the tea-coloured plaster ceiling. There was only one bed, listing dangerously on unstable pegs. The food Kurik had brought went into a cupboard with a dubiously rigged lock. Like the baker's apprentice, Elys hid away the coin he gave her-- the valuable silver in her shoes, the small coin in her bodice, and three shillings beneath a loose floorboard.

'Elys,' he said. 'Elys, this is no life. What happened to your home?'

'The old landlord died,' she mumbled. A careful hoard of lamp oil emerged from the shelf. She fumbled the flint, and gave it over when Kurik put out a hand. He lit the lamp and set the smoked glass over it. Greater visibility did not improve the room. 'Baker Jones took over the rents. We couldn't pay.'

'Talen worked for the baker?'

'He's a cruel man. He beats those boys. Everyone knows.' Elys brought him the single chair. It creaked with his weight. She knelt before him to remove his boots, and wiped his feet with one of the cloths from her basket of washing. She swiped at his hands, as well, but when he would have returned the favour she scuttled quickly away to the hearth. She balanced a dented cauldron over the flame to heat contaminated river water. No wonder she was ill, Kurik thought darkly.

'So Talen ran,' Kurik reasoned.

'No.' Elys unwound her headscarf and wrung out damp hair, a twisted rope of wheat that even now caught at Kurik's throat. She combed it slowly, snagging on tangles til it spread long over her shoulders. 'He's a good boy,' she mumbled, not meeting his eyes. 'He's a good boy. We needed the money.'

'Elys, what happened to the money I sent you?'

'The baker took it. When he turned us out. He was going to call the Watch.'

'I'll have his version of that,' Kurik told her. 'If there's a case against the baker I'll bring it to the Watch myself. They'll take the word of a squire over a burgher. Where is Talen?'

'He's a good boy.'

Kurik hesitated. 'I know,' he said. 'He's found other work then?'

'He brings coin.' Her smile was dazed, exhausted. 'When I wake it's in my hand. He leaves tea and biscuits by the bed. He's like a little holiday faerie, sneaking in to leave his treats.'

'You should be resting.' He lifted her from the floor. He was unsurprised to find her light as a bird, her heartbeat so rapid it seemed to flutter in her ribcage. He laid her on the bed and plucked delicately at her stays, loosening her corset. Her muddy slippers he removed and placed before the fire to dry, and he covered her with the limp dingy sheet. 'You have tea, then? Let me bring you some.'

After tea he stirred her a broth of dried beef and spooned it past her chapped lips. The night wore on, unmarked but for the distant sound of church bells. When midnight came and went, and Talen did not walk through the door, Kurik locked it tightly and set the chair against it. He would hear any knocking, and he didn't trust the security of the rat-trap house. He pillowed himself on the floor on his rolled cloak and shivered his way into uneasy sleep.

 

**

 

The morning came and leaked slowly into afternoon, and there was still no Talen.

Elys did not wake, and the weak sunlight never penetrated the grimy parchment of the window, so Kurik tended the fire quietly and used his dagger to slice the loaf he'd bought yesterday. He toasted it-- burnt it, on the lower corner, but Aslade was the cook, not him, and he only scraped off the soot. It was a sad breakfast, but he didn't want to use up the food he'd brought for Elys. In truth he was already planning what else to buy. He hadn't brought much coin other than what he'd already given her, but the Chapterhouse had winter stores, and surely they wouldn't notice if he took just a few things? A keg of small ale for medicinals, to regain her strength, and more of the dried beef, she would need meat if she were to fight this fever. A winter sickness should not linger so. It was nearer spring than not. Fresh fruit, if it could be got. He remembered Elys had a fondness for apples. Good crisp winter apples.

Elys slept through the day entirely. When she woke, groggy, her brow was sweaty, and she stumbled through her chores. Kurik propped her up in the bed and plied her with the last of the broth. She was asleep by the last spoonful, her skin burning hot. Cursing the necessity, Kurik left her there. He could not bolt the door from the outside and he couldn't find a key, if there had ever been one. The house was noisy with tenants up to various evening tasks, clattering on the stairs, laughing loudly, arguing even louder than that. A girl with overapplied kohl and rouge lingered on the front steps, sewing velvet scraps into a flower for her frock, and Kurik bribed her to stay til he got back and watch the door at the end of the hall. He also threatened to whip her, woman or no, with his belt if she disobeyed him. Hoping it would be enough, he set out into the city night.

Most of the shops had closed at dusk. He had waited too long. He had better luck at a tavern, buying a chunk of roast and boiled vegetables and wrapping them in greasepaper. While he waited he asked after Talen, describing the boy as he remembered-- small for his age, Elys' fine features and bright eyes.

'Oh, that one,' said the maid who wrapped string about his packet. 'Swept the floors for a bit. Haven't seen him since Michaelmas.'

'Reckon where he went?'

'No idea,' she replied, uninterested, and took his coin.

He had to walk a ways, but he needed to check his horse and pay for another night. At the farrier he asked again, reasoning it was nearer their original residence and Talen would be more familiar on these streets. He got a similar story as at the tavern; Talen had been there, for a short while, doing scut work for small pay. Kurik was troubled. He believed children should be industrious as soon as they were able, but if Talen had any skill he should have found a position that didn't end in trouble, and it seemed, somehow, that his employment never lasted more than a few weeks. And to leave his mother when she was ill, that was simply unconscionable. If Talen weren't dead in a ditch, Kurik would tan his hide so hard he'd have _that_ to sell for the money.

He spent another night on Elys' cold floor, worrying.

 

**

 

'Elys, I have to go,' he said. Her fingers were cool, he thought, stroking them. Her cheeks were not so flushed. A good long rest had helped. 'I'm late on my duty for the Knights, but I'll come back tomorrow.'

She was so small, even still. Willowy as a sapling. And her beauty, good God. He loved Aslade, but when he looked at her he saw the comfort of a good home, the mother of his children. Elys was a pink sunrise on dewed grass. Elys was skin like the finest glazed porcelain, hair like gold thread. The blue of her eyes was the blue of the unfettered sky over the ocean. In his life Kurik had seen many strange things, but never magic like the beauty in the bed who looked at him with love in her eyes and never asked him to stay.

'Elys,' he asked then. 'Where is Talen?'

Her long lashes fell low. 'He'll come. He always comes.'

'But where is he til then?' He waited for an answer; it never came. 'How long since you saw him?'

Her little hands were fists. He pried them open so she couldn't hurt herself on her ragged nails. 'He leaves the money.'

'But when's the last time you actually saw him? Elys?'

Her lower lip trembled. 'They'd have to tell me if they took him, wouldn't they? They wouldn't take him to the orphan asylums when his mother would claim him, would they?' Her eyes filled, and when she blinked a fat tear streaked her cheek, but no more followed. 'They'd have to find me if he were dead.'

Kurik stared at the embers of the dying fire. Wood, he thought dimly. He should bring wood, too, good oak that would burn longer than pitchy pine.

'I have to go,' he said at length. He bent and touched his mouth to her temple. Even now, ill as she was, her scent was like flowers, and he closed his eyes. 'Don't drink the river water. I'll bring you clean water from the upper city. The Pandions have their own well.'

He delivered his message and stayed long enough in the Chapterhouse to collect the monthly reports for the Motherhouse. He wheedled provisions from the Quartermaster, who undoubtedly thought it odd he wanted quite so much food for the ride back to Demos, but gave it willingly enough. Kurik filled his saddlebag and an extra sack as well, and rolled a good woollen blanket around a selection of clothes from the charity bin. The Pandions were, of course, universally male, and large men besides, but stockings and mittens and one hood with a rent in the hem were all easily repaired and would last at least another year. He took an abandoned shirt and tunic, as well, thinking of Talen, and hoping grimly that his hope was not misplaced.

He might have left, then. He'd completed his task and Elys waited. Aslade waited, and he couldn't prolong his stay too much longer without an explanation. But he passed the chapel on his way out. The door was open, one of the novitiates rubbing polish into the pews. He nodded affably to Kurik and bent back to his work.

Kurik chose a spot in the back, a hard bench half hidden by a stone column and with a poor view of the pulpit, but lit by the lone grace note in an otherwise featureless hall. The stained glass was of good quality, and though there were far better examples at the palace, Kurik had always liked this one for its simplicity. The white lily of chastity and purity. Aslade had worn a crown of daisies at their wedding. He'd given Elys a lily, plucked from the palace garden, the only flower that seemed beautiful enough for her.

 _God,_ he thought, closing tired eyes. _I am an unworthy man._

He lingered in Cimmura three days. He checked every orphan asylum, every sick house. He walked the waterfront, he walked the docks. He walked the churchyards and he looked at every face, every child. Every grave, marked and especially unmarked. He never found Talen. He rode home to the farm, alone, making plans to return.

 

**

 

Sparhawk the Younger had been a tall lad at nine, already strong and already of the grumpy temperament he'd be known for the rest of his life. He'd been distantly polite to Kurik, who at nineteen had plenty experience of nobles and kept his expectations appropriately low. Kalten had been the ice-breaker. A great bear of a boy with manners to match, his schemes had drawn a groaning Kurik into all kinds of trouble. Sparhawk was fiercely protective of his friend, and bore frequent punishment for it. Sparhawk the Elder had a broad rough hand and used it readily, once smack for the ill behaviour, the next for lying and taking sole blame. It never stopped Sparhawk from repeating himself, but it did make him a careful rider who never quite settled his sore behind in the saddle. In rare sympathy, privately just a little impressed, Kurik found a soft quilt to pad the seat, and Sparhawk's solemn nod of thanks pleased him.

Kurik's father lived long enough to see Kurik wed to Aslade and to hold his first grandson Khalad. An ailment of the stomach carried him away, coughing blood for a fortnight before dying in his sleep. Kurik had stepped into his father's shoes, adopting the traditional position of Squire to Sparhawk the Elder, but that arrangement had been short-lived as well. The Elder died in a crude skirmish on the Lamork border, brought low in an ugly unnamed valley and buried where he fell. Sparhawk the Younger became Sparhawk the only, and Kurik became his Squire. Kalten, long alone in the world, was closer than a brother to them both, and it was he who jollied them out of their grief when laughter and ale could serve, and he who sat quietly when it could not, hand on their shoulders in silent accord. It was not a friendship of equals-- it could never be that, even between Sparhawk and Kalten, for one would serve the King and one would never be more than a knight. But in a very real way that didn't matter. They shared something, that summer, the three of them, and it would sustain them the long years of exile.

Of course Kurik did not accompany Sparhawk to Rendor. King Aldreas was embittered but not cruel, and did not banish a servant with the master. Kurik offered to go, for all he was a father three times over by then and Aslade was starting to show the fourth. Sparhawk rode through Demos as he left Elenia, they thought, then, forever. Aslade had spoiled him, and Kurik had not objected, knowing it might well be the last time they-- well. Aslade made the finest meal of their simple farm fare, chicken and beef in gravy, roast potatoes, rolls so soft and yeasty that when they tore apart the steam curled to the nose like a welcome embrace. Kurik opened his father's last bottle of whiskey, and they had a dram, each of them, and Kurik let Sparhawk share a sip with Khalad who sat on his lap and made scrunch-nosed faces at the first sniff. Sparhawk smiled, just for that, and his big hand smoothed over Khalad's bush of dark hair and it shook. He helped Kurik tuck the boys into bed, pressing the quilt tight about their little bodies.

'Protect this,' Sparhawk said, his voice hoarse and tight.

Kurik clasped him close. 'Come home. You will, some day. I know it.'

Kalten was next, sent to Lamorkand for some imagined insult, and one by one the Primate Annias rid himself of enemies. Knights who'd never been political in their ambition were suddenly grave threats, and nobles whose lines were entrenched in fealty since before the Zemoch War found themselves without heirs. Aldreas was a weak king and his rule was an increasingly dark one. Even the harvests were poor, as if the earth itself rejected the man who occupied the throne by depopulating his kingdom. Kurik found reasons to avoid Cimmura. His world narrowed to just the boundaries of his farm, until whole months passed in which he saw no-one but his own family, said no names from the world beyond, thought of nothing but dirt and seeds and sheep and plows.

Preceptor Vanion paid him a call, then, perhaps eight months after Sparhawk's exile, and said, 'We could use you.'

He'd shaken his head. 'My place is here,' he said.

'No,' Vanion said, implacable. 'Your place is with our order. One day this will end. We will be ready. I won't accept anything less.'

'I'm not a knight,' he protested.

'If that's all that's bothering you, I can fix that.'

Chastened and not a little threatened by that, Kurik found it wiser to obey. And that was how he found himself making regular runs into Cimmura, to ensure that the training he provided at Demos was being adequately replicated at the smaller chapterhouse. When he did a thing it was done right, and though it kept him away from home longer and longer, he was proud of what he wrought. Sparhawk would have what he needed when he returned, and that was fit.

It was Beltane when he first saw Elys.

Beltane morning, anyway, the pre-dawn light providing dim grey edges to the hulking townhomes which jammed the maze of streets and were never empty of people, no matter the hour. The moon was full and slow to set, and it was a fat orange orb hanging low over the Cathedral, and there was the girl, taking a dreamy walk, barefoot, her slippers in her hand, her hair loose, her face upturned toward the moon as if she communed with God Himself through its beams. He felt in that instance something he had never known before, his breath catching, his gut hot and frozen at once and the most exquisite pain lancing his chest. _Yes_ , he thought, as if she were the answer to some profound question he had always been searching for. And then she had turned and seen him staring, blushing furiously. She clutched her shawl close and darted away. Ah, and so that was the end of it, he'd thought, both disappointed and relieved, and by breakfast he'd convinced himself it had all been a dream, anyway. But his meeting with the instructor ended early, and he roamed the city in a good mood, enjoying the cheer of the crowd, the unusually fine spring weather, not a raindrop in sight, the sun warm and welcoming, the gay laughter of brightly dressed children who ran the streets making mischief and reminding him of better days, and in the midst of all that there she was again, the girl, the girl. She'd been standing at a flower stall, one curling lock of pure gold tumbling from her braid to caress her cheek in the breeze, and then she shivered, looking up unerringly across the street to see him watching her. He'd bought the lily because her hand had touched it and it couldn't not belong to her.

She never asked him to stay. He told her the truth-- not in time to stop it, the strange feelings they both felt, the connection, but to his credit he told her the truth. She asked no questions about him, his life, his world beyond hers in the city, though he was consumed with curiosity about hers. She was of no family, of no note, too lowly even for service to some minor noble. Her beauty should have netted her a dozen suitors, but she had none, nor would he ever hear of any after, and it was as if she'd been made for him, had never existed before or after him. He had regretted it, of course, and he swore he would never see her again, but he knew he would fail. She never asked him to stay, not even when he finally gave in to the crawling need inside himself and sought her out, only to find her sitting riverside with a baby in a sling.

God, he had said, a word he drastically overused in her presence.

She turned her tiny oval face up to his, and smiled. 'Talen,' she answered. 'I'm going to call him Talen.  He's your son.'

 

**

 

He never found Talen. Talen found himself.

Kurik was late arriving in Cimmura, a delayed start from Demos compounded by a horse going lame from a bad trip in a foxhole. He'd had to bribe the gate guard to let him in, and he was in ill temper, but he bypassed the Chapterhouse and took himself straight to Lower Quarter, to the shabby room with its parchment paper windows and creaking stairs where Elys withered away. He knocked in warning at her door, and received no reply. He let himself in.

And found a knife pricking his kidney. He was pressed to the wall in a heartbeat, the dig of the blade dangerously competent.

'Right about now you've got to be reconsidering your options,' a boyish voice whispered. 'Go rob someone a little less vulnerable.'

He thought only of Elys. He cracked an elbow back and hit bone, diverted the knife with a swipe of his arm and used the leverage of his turn to add force to his shove. A body hit the boards and slid, and Kurik drew his dirk, throwing himself between the bed and the door.

'Get out before I call the Watch down on this place,' Kurik ordered his assailant. 'Get out before I leave them nothing but a corpse to clean up.'

'Kurik?'

Her weak groan nearly diverted him. 'Elys, it's me. You're unhurt?'

'Kurik, what is all this?' The lamp. He heard the snick of a flint, and light flared. Elys sat up in the bed, staring at him. Then with a low cry, she stumbled out of her sheets, flying past him before he could stop her. 'Talen!'

'Talen?' Kurik lowered his dirk. The boy who'd attacked him-- the boy he'd attacked, rather, who shrugged off his mother's frantic care and wiped blood on his sleeve. Kurik wet his lips, rubbed sweat off his upper lip in a mirror gesture. He sheathed his dagger and knelt. 'Talen, I'm sorry. I didn't know.'

The boy glared at him. Elys used the hem of her shift to clean red from his nose, til Kurik produced a kerchief and did it himself. He'd given Talen what would surely be a spectacular black eye by morning, and scraped his elbow raw on the rough floor besides. Kurik wet his lips, remorseful, attempting a gargled apology and accomplishing nothing. He'd never hit a child before, not like that. And Talen was nothing but a scrap, more bone than meat. Even the knife he'd tried to use on Kurik was too big for him, like the shirt that hung off one slim shoulder-- the shirt Kurik had brought from the Pandion Chapterhouse, on his last trip.

'No fussing, Mum,' Talen said at last. 'Go back to bed. It's all right.'

For all the fright they'd given her she went down easily, limp and exhausted. Talen managed to be between them the entire time, even with his back turned. He mixed her white powder from a small glass jar with wine from Kurik's Pandion keg, and soon she was dead to the world. Kurik at last used his greater size to simply reach over Talen, pressing the back of his hand to her forehead and then her cheek, as Aslade did for their boys, and found her warm, but not hot.

'I finally had enough coin for the physician,' Talen said.

'One of those corner snake-oilers?'

'A real physician. From Upper City.' Talen slumped to the floor, and Kurik knelt beside him. He took his time examining the boy, the rapid bruising on his nose, the trickle of blood that had yet to stanch. Kurik wet the edge of his kerchief with wine and blotted gently til it stopped. Hazel eyes, the boy had, though as a baby they'd been blue as anything he'd ever seen.

'Where in hell have you been?' he demanded, and his tone was unwontedly harsh, not at all expressive of the thing he felt, pressing on his gut.

'I told you,' Talen said, and pushed him away. 'Getting the money for the physician.'

'Doing what?' Kurik stood. He found he didn't quite remember exactly what Talen had looked like, the last time he'd seen the boy. That was going on nearly a year. He contrived, hardly fooling himself, to see only Elys, who never turned him away. Talen had never welcomed him.

'I don't owe an explanation.'

'Your mother thought you dead.'

'And she would have been, if I hadn't done what I did.' Talen faced him off, a fierce little lion with feet spread and arms crossed. 'I take care of her,' he said, lower lip jutting in something too old and weary for a child's pout.

Kurik swallowed back a hot retort. 'I know,' he said instead.

Perhaps his good opinion did matter for something, for Talen seemed to waver at that. He busied himself tidying the room, closing the door with a long check out the hall, stoking the smoking coals in the hearth til they gleamed red with warmth again, lowering the wick of the lamp til it was almost too dim to see by. He retreated to a little nest of belongings beneath the window-- he must sleep there, Kurik guessed, though all the blankets were on the bed and he had not even a pallet for comfort. Before Talen could sit Kurik stopped him. He untied his cloak and settled it about Talen's shoulders. 'You're a block of ice,' Kurik observed. 'You can't both of you take ill. Your mother needs you.'

Small hands plucked at the fine weave. It was only country homespun, but good quality, and Kurik was shamed all the more to realise his son found it a rare quality indeed.

'Tell me what happened with the baker,' he said gruffly.

'The baker?'

'I've had three tales of it now. I want yours.'

'Why?'

'So I can do something about it.'

'What?'

'Don't sass me, Talen.'

'I'm honestly curious. What do you think you can do that won't be undone the moment you're gone? He'll only throw us in the street again.' Talen tucked himself into his nest, the lamp to one hand, his knife to the other. Facing the door, ready for anything-- like a large man letting himself in after midnight.

'I've heard it said he's a cheat,' Kurik tried again.

'Just a little more obvious about it than other folk. I've a head for figures. I would do the daily sums for him. It didn't take long to see he was holding back.'

'If you have proof, you can go to the Town Council for recompense.'

Talen laughed derisively. 'That lot of fat old crows? They're elected. And not by my vote. They wouldn't rule for me.'

'Elys said he stole the money I sent?'

'It's not stealing to take it from a loose woman and her bastard boy. Everyone knows that.' Talen rubbed at a streak of soot on the lamp's glass. 'I know what a bastard is. Everyone's been at pains to make sure I know.'

Kurik eased down to the boards. The outer wall was cold, when he put his back to it, whitewash flaking off beneath his nail. He drew his knees to his chest. 'I can't undo it,' he said.

'Would you wish to?'

The woman on the bed lay with one hand outstretched in his direction. Elys had never asked. 'I've tried to do right.'

Talen laughed. It was far too cynical a laugh for a boy his age. 'Right doesn't matter all that much,' he said. 'Not really.'

 

**

 

Talen was gone in the morning. Kurik woke with a throbbing neck. Elys was more lively than when he'd seen her last, at least, weakly upright in her chair but tending to a breakfast porridge. Kurik ate as little as he could without offending, prompting her to take her fill. He had brought her a good new horsehair brush, and his reward was the pleasure of her long gold hair in his fingers, going fine and silk-smooth as he dragged the bristles through. Elys hummed in dreamy pleasure, and for a little while Kurik thought of nothing but how good it was, like that. But only for a little while.

'Where's the boy?' he asked her. He helped her dress, as he helped his wife, lowering the petticoat over her head, lacing the corset for her. Her slender arms vanished beneath sleeves that he tied to the bodice, and he smoothed her kirtle over her Pandion wool stockings, tying them to her dimpled knees with a slip of ribbon. Her little feet all but vanished in his hands when he put her slippers on them.

'He won't tell me.' Elys smiled wanly. 'I've supposed it's something he thinks would worry me.'

'If he's out of hand I can tend to that.'

'No.' She caught his hand and held it. 'Did he show you his drawings? We haven't had enough for paper since the winter.'

Talen's nest had vanished with the dawn. Elys found the hidden treasures, gently rolled and stowed in her floorboard. She treated each one with care and beaming pride. Kurik had no real eye for art, but even he could see that Talen had a dab hand. He'd captured interesting angles on the Cathedral's butterfly buttresses, shading individual bricks and ivy so lifelike Kurik could trace each vine. There were faces and hands-- hands he recognised as Elys', for surely fingers so fine were rare in Lower Quarter-- hands he thought might be the evil Baker's, kneading at dough. Disconnected eyes with busy brows, a nose with a notable crook in it, several lips with fat chins and unkempt whiskers. 'He's good,' Kurik said, though in truth it seemed a pleasant hobby only, and, as Elys noted, one with an inherent expense. Paper and charcoal would be beyond their means now, specially if Talen had found a doctor so expensive he catered solely to the Upper City.

'He said he had a head for numbers?'

'He must have got that from you, for he never had it from me,' Elys smiled. She wove a braid in her long hair and pinned it in a bun.

'If he's intelligent, perhaps he should have schooling.'

'Coin,' she said, as he knew she would. 'I make enough to keep us in rent, or I did before this fever. Maybe by summer.'

'About that.' Kurik took the purse from his tunic. 'It won't last long, but I will send more.'

He made his trip to the Chapterhouse, careful this time to ask the Quartermaster for different items so it would not be obvious he was not asking for himself. Good black tea, a pound of grain and another of flour and then the Quartermaster, with a wink, presented him a rum cake of dried fruit and nuts that, he claimed, had gone uneaten this holiday season and couldn't be expected to hold for another. 'I've heard it's dry up in Demos,' he grinned, and Kurik nodded uneasy thanks for his part in the deception.

Talen awaited him just beyond the gate. Kurik, not expecting him, nearly rode past. He yanked at the reins, swearing in his startlement. 'What are you doing here, boy?'

'Followed you,' was the unrepentant answer. 'Are you a knight, then?'

'Not a knight, no.' His heartbeat was normalising. 'Squire to one. Why follow me?'

'Reckoned you were leaving.'

He shook his head. 'Not just yet. Tomorrow.'

'Long stay, then.'

Kurik's horse sensed his agitation. It pawed the cobblestones, wandering a few steps from Talen before Kurik was able to rein him in. Out of sorts with himself and the more irritable for the unaccustomed discomfiture, Kurik swore again, and thrust out a hand.

Talen regarded him warily. 'What?'

'Don't sass me, boy. I'm taking you home.'

'You want me up on that thing?'

It was, he'd realise later, the first time he ever related to his son. Talen was a small seven year old boy, and the horse was a giant snorting monster, and probably the closest Talen had ever been, city boy that he was, to a large animal like that. Very carefully Kurik did not grin. But he kept his hand out. 'I'll lift you. Put your foot on mine. Right foot. Swing your left over the bow.'

It took a few tries-- Talen had to trust him and Kurik had to lean down more than he'd thought-- but they got Talen up into the saddle. He was a small warm thing against Kurik's chest, rising no higher than his collar. Kurik lifted one of his little hands. 'Take the reins.'

'I don't know what to do!'

'I'll tell you.' He helped Talen form his fingers around the leather stripes. 'Be firm. The horse mostly knows what to do. We're going straight, so we're going to give him a nudge with our ankles-- good. Give the reins a little flap. Good. Now we're going to go left up there, so we draw the reins across the horse's neck, like this. Just a little pressure so he knows what we want him to do. Yes, just like that.' Gently he let his arms rest on Talen's thighs, giving him control over the reins but ready to reach, if he had to. 'Good boy,' he said.

'Kurik,' Talen asked, after a time of uneasy quiet.

'Yes, Talen.'

'What are they like?'

'Who?'

'Your family.'

Kurik scratched at his beard, wondering what to say to that. 'Did Elys tell you anything?'

'No. I figured it out myself. It's all right.' Talen was subdued. 'I just wonder sometimes.'

'I have a wife,' he said slowly. 'Her name is Aslade. Biggest heart I've ever known. Not a soul passes our home but doesn't feel welcome. And the food. She'd have me fat and full every moment if she could manage it. It's as well I train the novices.' He indicated an avenue that cut around the butcher's lane, and Talen turned their horse to the right. They plodded on. The midday crowd was more sparse, with people at their work. 'I have four boys, all older than you. They take after me; Khalad will be full bearded before he's sixteen, poor lad. Our faces aren't much to look at it, it's true, but covering half of it with a big black bush doesn't help the matter.' Talen's stomach flexed, as if he were laughing, but no sound escaped him. 'I have a farm,' Kurik said. 'A place called Demos. It's not a big farm, but the land's been with my family for generations, and it's good soil. I like the growing of things. I imagine one of the boys will take it when I'm gone. Khalad, he's the eldest, he'll be a squire like me. It always goes to the eldest boy. It's no easy position, you know. Nobles aren't like us. They need extra looking after.'

This time he was sure he felt Talen relax. He leant, just a little more, against Kurik's chest. 'How far away is Demos?' he asked.

'Nearly a day's ride.'

'That's very far,' Talen said, impressed.

'Not so very far,' Kurik chuckled. 'I've been much further away. To the great city Chyrellos, even to other kingdoms. I went as far as Arcium when I was younger than you.'

'What's Arcium?'

'Far to the south. By the Inner Sea, across which is Rendor.'

'I've heard of that. That's where the bad people are?'

'There's bad people everywhere,' Kurik said. 'But you should know more of the world. I spoke to your mother. I want to send you to school. If you can add sums already, you can get better work.' Talen pricked an ear to that, tilting his head up to look at Kurik. 'Mind the road,' Kurik reminded him. 'And don't tell me no. I'll find the money.'

'It sounds like a lot of bother,' Talen muttered.

'You're not a lot of bother, Talen.'

Talen's hands went tight on the reins. Kurik covered them with his.

 

**

 

He left them in the morning. Elys took him in a kiss, and though he knew he shouldn't he let her. She was luminous, in the morning sun, and it gladdened him to see her well enough to venture out of doors with them. It was the first really good spring day in Cimmura, and she seemed to draw strength from it, turning her pale face up to catch the light.

'No more mischief,' Kurik told Talen. 'You let us worry. It's not your place to be doing whatever it is you're doing, and don't think I didn't notice you wiggling your way out of telling me the truth.'

'I'm not a child,' the boy said, and for all his too-worldly insights his pinched little mouth begged for any reassurance. Kurik went to one knee, and put his hands on Talen's shoulders. 'I'll take care of her,' Talen said.

'I believe you will,' Kurik replied. 'Bless your old father?'

Elys stood with a finger to her lips. Her smile curved sweetly, loving them both. Talen was red, high in the cheeks, but he bestowed his kiss on Kurik's bearded cheek, and let Kurik return him one on the top of his ragged head.

'I'll come back,' he told them, maybe a promise, and though Talen shook his head and didn't stay to watch him leave, Elys waved him off, and he mounted his horse and wheeled it about in the narrow street. 'Don't drink that river water. Boil it, at least.'

'We will.' The sun on her hair. It caught him in the chest, still, after all these years, and he breathed in dank city air and couldn't wish it otherwise.

He caught a glimpse of Talen, as he rode away, or thought he did. He lifted his hand, just in case.


End file.
